Weekend Arts Agenda: ‘Courtney’ February 21 2014

It’s like love, man.

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  • Courtesy Arnika Gallery
  • Allen Cooley, “Deconstructed #2”



SCAD professor Allen Cooley will open Courtney: A Visual Depiction of a Love I Don’t Completely Understand at the Arnika Dawkins Gallery this Friday, with a reception from 6-9 p.m. (and an artist talk in the middle, at 7:15 p.m.). Cooley is a noted magazine photographer, having shot for Essence, Jet, and others, though this exhibiting collection is mostly flowers - and black. The flowers are a metaphor; their analog is love. As the gallery touts Courtney, “Through Cooley’s lens we are afforded an intimate view of a flower’s perfect imperfection.” Notice the compositions.

After the jump: more.

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FRIDAY

Whitespace will open Surfaces + Structures, featuring Ashlynn Browning and Eric Mack, with a reception from 7-10 p.m. In her artist statement, Browning self-professes a knack for “creating a hybrid of geometric forms and intuitive, painterly process.” Mack’s begins with “Form communicates emotion. Pattern transmits expression.”

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  • Courtesy Andy Ditzler
  • From left: triple 16mm projection; Custom Flicker Machine; Velvet Underground vinyl. Photo by Andy Ditzler



Film Love, Andy Ditzler’s quarterly screening series, returns with “rare 16mm rehearsal films of the Velvet Underground made by Andy Warhol, presented in an immersive multiple-projection light environment” as part of an evening tribute to the band’s leader, Lou Reed. Almost every part of that description is interesting, not the least for how strange Warhol’s film work is, always, to experience. Plus: Lou Reed. Starts at 8 p.m. at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Tickets are $8, $5 (student/senior), or free with ACAC membership.

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  • Courtesy Camila Butcher
  • Solange Farkas



Videobrasil, the festival that solidified electronic media in Brazil, is coming to Georgia State. So is Videobrasil’s founder and chief curator, Solange Farkas. This week, for the three consecutive nights, Farkas has screened selections from the festival’s three phases, beginning with its inception in the ’80s and continuing to the present. GSU art professor Kimberly Cleveland, the project lead, interviewed Farkas during her doctoral work in 2005; the artist Marcia Vaitsman has worked with Videobrasil - her work is screened this week. Cleveland says the collaboration to bring Farkas and her festival to Atlanta (Videobrasil brought together “the most important body of video and performance art from the geopolitical South”), which Vaitsman proposed, seemed “a great fit.” Friday’s screening covers the most contemporary work. It begins at 7 p.m. in the Centennial Hall Auditorium, followed by a closing reception.

SATURDAY

PSA: Jason Peters (via Skype) and George Long will give artist talks on their work in COSMS at the Midtown Plaza at 4 p.m.